West mistaken – no plans to re-create Soviet Union – Putin on Ukraine

(Interfax – December 20, 2015)

Petropavlovsk-Kamchatskiy, 20 December: Russian President Vladimir Putin regrets that in the implementation of its policy with regard to Ukraine and the whole post-Soviet space, the West is guided by the erroneous notion that Moscow wants to restore the Soviet Union.

“As for Ukraine and all the former Soviet Union, I am convinced that the position of our partners, both European and American, is driven not by the protection of the interests of Ukraine but is an attempt to prevent the restoration of the Soviet Union. And nobody wants to believe us that we have no plans to recreate the Soviet Union,” the president said in an interview as part of the TV channel Rossiya 1 (VGTRK) documentary “World Order”.

As Putin put it, “even the hypothetical possibility itself that Russia and Ukraine might join forces as part of modern, primarily economic integration processes which would certainly make both Russia and Ukraine more competitive in the global economy – even this hypothetical possibility itself is causing our partners to have sleepless nights [literally: “is not letting our partners have a good, deep sleep”]”.

“I think that their main aim is to prevent this joining of forces. It is indeed an open secret that the West did everything in its power to prevent the creation of the Single Economic Space, as up till now they did not even want to talk to the Eurasian Economic Union as a full member of international life. Somehow, it’s OK to create the European Union but not the Eurasian Union,” he said.

Nevertheless, according to Putin, the “realization that this position is destructive [counterproductive] is now gradually dawning on our partners”.